A funny week of games and results. By the miracles of graveyard technology I was in Spain for the last fortnight so I’ve missed the last three matches. Timed when we had three away games I’ll have you notice. Anyway, sounded like a very stout effort at Consett, with our old hero Steve Callen eventually notching with his backside to settle things. Nobody will get much up there I reckon, and they already look hot shots for the title. There is no doubt that great crowds and a plastic pitch working hard during the week means lots of cash to spend on the team. Good luck to them, good club.
At Seaham evidently we were ropey for an hour and then excellent for the last thirty minutes, pulled things back nicely and had a chance with a penalty to take the points. Still a draw away in a derby is never a bad result. Getting beat at Penrith however you look at it is a bad result, though nobody would ever bet against it happening in a midweek game over there; getting a side out is quite an achievement. Having said that I remember a few years back we went there, last game of the season, with a very slim squad, Colin Larkin in goal (because he picked the team) and the previously mentioned Steve Callen playing centre half about sums it up. Larks hardly touched the ball, Stevie Call was majestic, and we won two nil without breaking sweat. Not likely to happen very often though. This time we had both assistant managers on the bench. On its own one of those nights you can write off and move on from, but with a lot of games to play this month a little bit of anxiety can creep in. Hopefully not this time.
Still on we go, and some interesting games coming up, and the chance for some young boys to make their name.
In the big boys game Sunderland produced a classic, seen this all before, couple of performances, winning five nil and promptly losing four nil a few days later. Having said that, after seeing no more than a five second clip from the Portsmouth game it was obvious it should never have been finished, and certainly wouldn’t have been in the Northern League. The scoreline is irrelevant, when the ball won’t run, anywhere on the pitch, the game should be abandoned. A few more clips showed this was absolutely the case. What was the ref a thinking of??
Last times of writing I expressed a wish, and a hope, that the European Ryder Cup team might rise to the occasion at the golf over in Wisconsin. I was wrong and disappointed. It was a massacre. The Yanks clearly have a lot of excellent young golfers and it looked like time caught up with a few of ours, Westwood, Poulter as examples. And Rory was just poor. Golf is a very funny game though, you can be playing well and all of a sudden its gone. And it applies from hackers up to professionals, in a way you rarely, if ever, see in other sports. A few years David Duvall came over from the States and looked unbeatable for a year or two, until all of a sudden it went. And never came back. But the most famour collapse was that of the Aussie Ian Baker-Finch. He won the Open in 1991, after which his game collapsed. Four years later he managed to hit his tee shot on the first in the Open at St Andrews out of bounds left, which was thought to be impossible. In the next two seasons he either missed the cut, was disqualified or withdrew in all 29 tournaments he entered. A year later he retired, even though he still had four years of exemptions into competitions left. He was thirty six…